Cookies and information capsules

What is a cookie?

Cookies are text files containing small amounts of information which are downloaded to your device when you visit a website. Cookies are then sent back to the originating website on each subsequent visit, or to another website that recognises that cookie. Cookies are useful because they allow a website to recognise a user’s device.

Cookies help us to improve our site and to deliver a better and more personalised service, for instance by storing information about your preferences and allowing us to recognise you when you return to our site. You may refuse to accept cookies by activating settings on your internet browser. However, please note that if you select such settings certain parts of our site may not work properly.

The information we collect may include IP-addresses, browser version, number of visits, which pages you access and your viewing preferences.

We use the following categories of cookies on our website

Category 1 - Strictly Necessary Cookies

These cookies are essential in order to enable you to move around the website and use its features, such as accessing secure areas of the website. Without these cookies, services you have asked for cannot be provided. We don’t use these cookies to gather information about you that could be used for profiling, advertising or remembering where you’ve been on the internet.

Category 2 - Performance Cookies

These cookies collect information on how visitors use our website. For example, which pages visitors go to most often, and if you get error messages from web pages. These cookies don’t collect information that directly identifies you as a visitor. The information these cookies collect is aggregated and therefore anonymous. It is only used to improve how a website works.

Category 3 - Functionality Cookies

These cookies remember choices you make such as the country you visit our website from, language or the region you are in. These can then be used to provide you with an experience more appropriate to your selections and to make the visits more tailored and pleasant. The information these cookies collect may be anonymised and they cannot track your browsing activity on other websites.

Category 4 - Targeting cookies or advertising cookies

These cookies collect information about your browsing habits in order to make advertising more relevant to you and your interests. They are also used to limit the number of times you see an advert as well as help measure the effectiveness of an advertising campaign. The cookies are usually placed by third party advertising networks with the website operator’s permission. They remember the websites you visit and that information is shared with other parties such as advertisers.

Category 5 - Social Media Cookies

These cookies allow you to share what you’ve been doing on the website on social media such as LinkedIn, Pinterest, Facebook and Twitter. These cookies are not within our control. This information may be linked to targeting/advertising activities. Please refer to the respective social media’s privacy policies for how their cookies work.

Use of Web Beacons

Some of our web pages may contain electronic images known as web beacons, among other things, that allow us to count users who have visited these pages. Web beacons collect only limited information including a cookie number, time and date of a page view, and a description of the page on which the web page resides. We may also carry web beacons placed by third party advertisers. These beacons do not carry any directly personally identifiable information and are only used to track the effectiveness of a particular campaign.

Consent to Cookies

In order to place cookies on your device, we require your consent (except for Strictly Necessary Cookies**)**. If you don’t want to receive cookies at all, you can modify your browser so that it notifies you when cookies are sent to it or you can refuse cookies altogether.

Please note that if you continue to browse the site, you will be considered to have agreed to our use of cookies.

You can withdraw your consent to our use of cookies at any time. If you wish to restrict or block web browser cookies which have been set on your device then you can do this through your browser settings; the Help function within your browser should tell you how. You can also use your browser settings to delete cookies that have already been set.

Alternatively, you may wish to visit www.aboutcookies.org, which contains comprehensive information on how to do this on a wide variety of desktop browsers. However, please note that if you select such settings you may be unable to access certain parts of our site or certain content or functionality may not be available.

If you’d like to opt out of other third party cookies relating to behavioural advertising, please go to www.youronlinechoices.eu. Opting out does not mean you will no longer receive online advertising. It does mean that the company or companies from which you opted out will no longer deliver ads tailored to your web preferences and usage patterns.